Tim Burton Says He Won't Work for Disney Again

[Cheburashka]

Interesting article indicating that Disney isn't only getting worse in the family vacation department. The movies are being short-shrifted, too. Already knew that, of course, but it is validating to see a top director come out and say it.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/23/entertainment/tim-burton-disney-dumbo/index.html

 

[Schneewittchen37]

As they say in my industry - "Garbage in, garbage out."

 

[_19disnA]

Article reads more like 'sour grapes' to me since he and Disney apparently have their differences in creative approaches.

 

[BrianL]

His frustrations are certainly valid, but tha;ts the reality of working for any of the big corporations, and always has been. There are always sgoing to be a lot of cooks in the kitchen when you're working for Disney or Marvel, but also for Universal, WB, etc. Tim Burton has had enough success in his career that he can do his own thing and doesn't ahve to be beholden to corporate overlords, so good for him. Still, it doesn't mean that the big companies don't still turn out some decent stuff from time to time.

 

[MillauFr]

I think he got upset when buying Genie + at Disneyworld and felt he didn't get his money's worth.

 

[VandVsmama]

Tim Burton has always been a "think outside the box" kind of person. He's going to go wherever he can let his creative juices flow. Not all of the movies he's made are in the realm of things that Disney would have wanted anyway.

I'm looking forward to his new Beetlejuice movie with Johnny Depp!

 

[Cannot_Wait_4Disney]

I find it hilariously ironic that Burton complains about homogenized and consolidated when in fact that could be said about him. He's just as inside a box as he thinks Disney is. It just happens to be a different box.

 

[LuvOrlando]

He is a talented guy, creative and original with well formed ideas that allowed me to follow him off the beaten path into an offbeat but not scary world, he never really drifted from his brand.

DIsney, on the other hand, has had a few erratic episodes where the infighting spills out into the customer experience. The brand used to be 100% quality in a non controversial realm. Somewhere along the line it morphed into weird bouts of shouty activism and when that happened it stopped being cohesive, must be that a bunch of this sort became powerful because no-one turned off the faucet even after mounting underwhelming performance. All you need to do to see this is watch the product through the years, it's become very inconsistent to the point we couldn't coax our adult children who grew up with Disney, Marvel and the DIsney Channel into watching Werewolf by Night, which was great BTW.
There is a reason that for 20 years me and others never went anywhere else, and there is also a reason why lifelong fans are drifting. Maybe they need to start playing their own song.

 

[MillauFr]

He is a talented guy, creative and original with well formed ideas that allowed me to follow him off the beaten path into an offbeat but not scary world, he never really drifted from his brand.

DIsney, on the other hand, has had a few erratic episodes where the infighting spills out into the customer experience. The brand used to be 100% quality in a non controversial realm. Somewhere along the line it morphed into weird bouts of shouty activism and when that happened it stopped being cohesive, must be that a bunch of this sort became powerful because no-one turned off the faucet even after mounting underwhelming performance. All you need to do to see this is watch the product through the years, it's become very inconsistent to the point we couldn't coax our adult children who grew up with Disney, Marvel and the DIsney Channel into watching Werewolf by Night, which was great BTW.
There is a reason that for 20 years me and others never went anywhere else, and there is also a reason why lifelong fans are drifting. Maybe they need to start playing their own song.

Was the brand non controversial when they released Song of the South?

 

[LuvOrlando]

Was the brand non controversial when they released Song of the South?

How far back are we going to look? Do we look at some things and not others? Who gets to say which things we all care about and which we don't?
As a female I don't love that everyone took their sweet time too deal with suffrage and that in most corners of the world females are still routinely systemically dehumanized in all sorts of ways. Gets messy pretty quickly.

How about people have opinions and businesses stay out of it, other than following hiring laws defined by elected representatives.

 

[VandVsmama]

Was the brand non controversial when they released Song of the South?

What does that have to do with Tim Burton?

 

[Mysterian]

I recall reading about how Burton had some rocky dealings with Warner Bros during Batman Returns. He only agreed to do the movie because they would give him more control, only during production they starting meddling because they were more concerned with the merchandising than making a film.

That said, a huge budget, lots of producers, big superhero IP: I can see why he's weary of getting attached to a Disney's Marvel/Star Wars projects. Disney's Marvel and Star Wars films are known for having whole committees involved, and that's probably something he'd be immediately adverse to. The studios are definitely out to protect their brands and will try to keep these movies as accessible as they can.

However, many directors seem to work pretty harmoniously with Disney, and Disney+'s Star Wars stuff doesn't seem to suffer from such stringent executive control.

 

[Jennasis]

Burton doesn't need Disney and Disney doesn't need Burton. It's all good.